Athenian Currency in the Late Fifth and Early Fourth Century B.C. Giovannini,
Adalberto Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1975; 16, 2; ProQuest pg. 185

Athenian Currency in the Late Fifth 
and Early Fourth Century B.C. 

Adalberto Giovannini 

I N A RECENT VOLUME of Hesperial Professor Stroud has published a 
remarkable Athenian law of the year 375/4 B.C. enforcing the 
acceptance of the Attic silver coinage. As Stroud stressed in his 

excellent commentary, the document reveals a situation of emer­
gency in which the Athenians no longer trusted their own coinage 
and sometimes even refused to accept payments in Attic currency. It 
shows too that the Athenians were determined to reestablish order 
and confidence, probably-as the editor suggested-because it was a 
necessity for realizing their political ambitions. Stroud found no 
satisfactory explanation, however, for the fact that the Athenians 
refused to accept their own coinage. I believe that such an explanation 
can be found by interpreting one of the clauses of the law in a way 
different from Stroud's interpretation. The purpose of this article is 
to present this alternative, and to show that it provides a satisfactory 
basis to explain the circumstances which led to this critical situation. 

But before doing this, it is necessary to clear up another point. It is 
widely accepted in the standard literature that the Athenians struck 
plated coins at the end of the Peloponnesian War to cover their 
desperate need of money. This view is certainly incorrect, as I hope to 
demonstrate. 

I. The Athenian Bronze Coinage at the End 
of the Peloponnesian War 

The view that in their financial distress at the end of the Pelopon­
nesian War the Athenians issued plated drachmas and tetradrachms 
is usually accepted as an established fact needing no further justifica­
tion.2 This unanimity relies apparently on the authority ofB. V. Head, 

1 Hesperia 43 (1974) 157-88. 
2 See for instance W. S. Ferguson, CAR V (1927) 355f and Plates II (1928) p.4; ib., The 

Treasurers of Athena (Cambridge [Mass.] 1932) 88 and n.2; E. S. G. Robinson, NC SER. VI 7 
(1947) 119; C. Seltman, Greek Coins2 (London 1955) 137f; V. Ehrenberg, The People of Aristoph-

185 



186 ATHENIAN CURRENCY 

who in his Historia Numorum2 (Chicago 1967) 373 identifies the small 
number of plated drachmas and tetradrachms known to him with 
the bronze coinage which-as we know from Aristophanes, Frogs 
718-37 and Ecclesiazusae 813-22-was introduced in 406/5 and with­
drawn from circulation about twelve years later. E. S. G. Robinson 
attributed to the same official issue a hoard of plated drachmas 
found at Eleusis in 1902.3 

Actually Aristophanes uses the word <plated' neither in Frogs nor in 
Ecclesiazusae. In Frogs he compares the bad bronze coins (1TOV7Jpd. 
xaAKla) in circulation at the time and the bad politicians of his day 
with the fine silver coins and the able statesmen the Athenians had 
had in the past. In Ecclesiazusae, which was written about twelve years 
later, a citizen complains because a declaration of the herald has 
rendered valueless the bronze coins he owns (vv.821-22 p.Tj oExeCOat 
p.'Y10Eva xaAKoiJv 'TO AOt1TOV· apyopcp yd.p xpwp.eOa). In both plays the 
word used by Aristophanes is xaAKoc or xaAKlov or xaAKoiJc, which can 
occasionally be synonymous with v1ToxaAKoc (i.e. <plated')4 but usually 
applies to ordinary plain bronze coins. 

In an article published in ANSMN 9 (1960) E. S. G. Robinson has 
adduced convincing arguments that the coins to which Aristophanes 
refers in Ecclesiazusae must be tokens of small denominations and 
cannot therefore be identified with the plated drachmas and tetra­
drachms known from the hoard of Eleusis and from some museum 
collections.a He pointed out that for the every-day shopping (the 
citizen had got these coins by selling grapes and had hoped to buy 
some flour with them) people did not use drachmas and still less 
tetradrachms. He was confirmed in his opinion by a fragment of 
Aristophanes' Aiolosikon (fr.3 Kock) which clearly refers to the same 
situation: there somebody complains that a coin he had inadvertently 
left in his purse and had been worth two obols was now no more than 
a <dikollybos', i.e. more or less nothing. Robinson identified these 
small coins with an issue of Attic bronze coins of which only very few 

anes3 (New York 1962) 222; W. B. Stanford, ed. Aristcphanes, The Frogsl (London I New 
York 1963) ad loc.; C. M. Kraay, Coins of Ancient Athens (Newcastle 1968) 7; E. Will, I.e monde 
grec et l'Orient I (Paris 1972) 387. 

a loc.cit. (supra n.2) and ANSMN 9 (1960) 10f. See now M. Thompson / o. Mli1rkholm I 
C. M. Kraay, An Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards (New York 1973) no.46. 

, See J. R. Melville Jones, NC SER. vu 12 (1972) 39-43. 
5 E. S. G. Robinson, "Some Problems in the Later Fifth Century Coinage of Athens," 

ANSMN 9 (1960) 13f, following H. B. Earle Fox, NC SER. IV 5 (1905) 1-9. 



ADALBERTO GIOVANNINI 187 

are preserved and which in his opinion corresponded exactly to the 
description of Aristophanes and the situation of the time. These coins 
carry the unusual inscription ABH instead of ABE found on Attic 
coinage down to the first century; they also bear symbols that do not 
occur elsewhere on Attic coins and seem to be indications of value: 
the larger issue has two pellets, the smaller only one.6 Robinson 
thought that the inscription ABH had the purpose of making this 
emergency issue easily distinguishable from the normal issues and 
that the pellets indicated the token value of the coins: two pellets 
meaning two obols and one pellet one obol. Robinson later recog­
nized, however, that this identification was most probably incorrect: 7 

it appeared that none of the known specimens of this issue was found 
at Athens, whereas six of them were discovered in the excavations at 
Olynthus. This fact strongly suggests that these coins were the emer­
gency issue of Timotheos struck during the siege of Olynthus and 
known from a famous passage of [Arist.] Dec. 2.2.23 (1350a). 

But there is a further type of bronze coin which also carries the 
inscription A8H and also belongs to the earliest bronze issues of 
Athens.s An additional peculiarity of this type is that on most of them 
the owl is turned to the left, whereas on all regular issues of silver as 
well as of bronze it is turned to the right. These coins certainly 
circulated at Athens, for many specimens were found during the 
excavations of the Agora.9 Both peculiarities, the inscription A8H 
and the position of the owl, make this issue easily recognizable, as 
would be expected in the case of an emergency issue intended to be 
withdrawn as soon as possible. These are probably the small de­
nominations mentioned by Aristophanes in Ecclesiazusae and Aiolo­
sikon. 

Unfortunately, Robinson failed to go a step further to conclude that 
the bronze coins in Frogs are certainly the same small denominations 
that occur in Ecclesiazusae and Aiolosikon. He assumed instead that the 

6 BMC Attica, pI. VIS; J. N. Svoronos, Les monnaies d'Atltenes (1923/6) pI. 22,93-98, who 
attributed them to Lachares. The identification of Robinson has been accepted by M. J. 
Price in Essays in Greek Coinage presented to Stanley Robinson (Oxford 1968) 90. The view that 
the bronze coins of Aristophanes are small denominations was also formulated by P. 
Gardner, A History of Ancient Coinage 700-300 B.C. (Oxford 1918) 295-97, who, however, 
rejected the identification with the ABH·coins. 

7 E. S. G. Robinson / M. Jessop Price, "An Emergency Coinage of Timotheos," NC SER. 

VII 7 (1967) 1-6. 
8 BMC Attica, pI. VI,ll; Svoronos, op.cit. (supra n.6) pI. 22,80-88. 
8 See F. Kleiner in an article forthcoming in Hesperia 44 (1975). 



188 ATHENIAN CURRENCY 

Athenians minted two types of bronze coins: in the last two years of 
the Peloponnesian War they struck plated coins and later, when the 
war was over, the coins with the inscription Af?JH. Robinson was 
probably influenced by his belief that the spelling' A01]vaiot instead 
of' Alhvaiot became official only in 403 (op.cit. 13). But this is not true. 
Inscriptions show that 'A81]vaiot appears as early as 410/09 and had 
become the normal form by 408/7.10 Perhaps he was also influenced 
by the words used by Aristophanes in Frogs to qualify this coinage: 
7ToV'YJpa xaAKta and KaKtC'TOV K6,.,.,.,.a (vv.725-26). But those contemp­
tuous expressions are sufficiently explained by the comparison of 
silver with able politicians on the one hand and bronze with dema­
gogues on the other. The fact that bronze replaced silver was bad 
enough in itself to justify the epithets 7ToV'YJp6c and KaKK'TOc.ll As a 
matter of fact there is no reason to doubt that the xaAKta of Frogs and 
the xaAKoiJc of Ecclesiazusae are one and the same thing, and that 
therefore Athens struck only one type of bronze coin from 406/5 
onward: the small denominations which carry the inscription Af?JH. 

Further considerations make this solution much more satisfactory 
than the idea that the Athenians would have issued plated coins in 
those critical years. First, as Robinson himself noticed Cop. cit. 9), the 
simultaneous circulation of authentic and plated silver would have 
caused great confusion. And the confusion would have been still 
greater at the moment when the Athenians would return to a silver 
currency and withdraw the bad coins from circulation, as they 
actually did. Secondly, the minting of plated coins would have dis­
credited the Athenian coinage completely. The Athenian currency 
enjoyed a high reputation in the Greek world because of its consistent 
quality. And the Athenians were proud of it, as we can see in the same 

10IG 12 lOS lines 14, 26 and 27; IG 12 118 lines 9, nf and 14f. 
11 The scholiast does not help here. He explains 7TOVTJPa. XaAKla as a8&Kll-'a Ka~ I-'ftl-"YI-'EVa 

XaAICciJ. But this fits neither a plated coinage nor the substitution of silver by bronze. He 
obviously did not know what Aristophanes alluded to. See also J. Babelon, REG 2 (1889) 
141f. Stroud suggested to me by letter that the word KEKL{18-qAWI-'EVOL of v.72! could possibly 
be an allusion to counterfeits. I think that the correct explanation of this word has been 
given by B. B. Rogers in his commentary ad. loc.: Aristophanes praises the exceptional 
purity of Attic silver and stresses that it was not mixed with vile metal. If we must believe 
Demosthenes (24.214), many states debased their coins by mixing the silver with copper: 
apyvpltp .•. 7ToMd "TWV 7TOAEWV Kat cpaVftpWC 7Tp6C XaAK6V Kat ,.,.<>>..v{1oov KftKpal-'EVtp xpWl-'ftVaL. 
Demosthenes does not accuse these cities of plating their coins, and it is very doubtful 
whether Greek states ever issued plated coins (see K. Regling, RE 4A [1931] 472ff s.v. 
SUBABRATUS and RE 16 [1933] 460 s.v. MiiNZWBSBN). 



ADALBERTO GIOVANNINI 189 

passage of Frogs (vv.721-24). This reputation would have been lost at 
once and would have been very hard to regain. But there is still worse: 
this <dishonesty' would have been quite useless. For it is clearly 
implied by Ecclesia~usae 815-16 that the decision to strike bronze coins 
was made by a decree of the people and was therefore known to 
everybody.12 Actually the Frogs passage shows that the replacement 
of the silver coinage by bronze was known to all. But usually people 
or states that strike plated coins do so in the hope of deceiving the 
customer: otherwise the plating of coins would be only a waste of 
time and of silver. It is hard to believe that the Athenians were as 
silly as that. So there are very serious reasons to believe that the 
Athenians never issued plated coins, either at the end of the Pelopon­
nesian War or at any other period of their history. The hoard of 
plated coins found at Eleusis can be confidently attributed to a private 
forger, just like the hoards of plated Republican coins inventoried by 
M. H. Crawford.13 This conclusion helps us to understand the currency 
policy of the Athenians at the end of the Peloponnesian War. In order 
to finance their final war effort, the Athenians began in 406 to mint 
gold and bronze coins. These issues have been explained in different 
ways. It has been assumed that they were complementary, i.e. that 
the gold was used for the larger denominations and the bronze for 
the smaller ones.14 Some scholars believe that the Athenians first 
used gold and then, when its supply was exhausted, had to resort to 
bronze.15 W. E. Thompson has shown in an excellent article that 
these views are not correct.16 He convincingly argued that the issues 
of gold and bronze were not successive but contemporaneous and 
that they had different purposes. The gold was struck for meeting 
such external obligations as pay for mercenaries or the purchase of 
ships from Macedonia; it probably was not used in Athens at all. The 
bronze coins, on the contrary, were struck only for domestic use, 

12 Tove XaAKOVe 8' €Kdvove TJvlKa €r/rrJ1>,eap.£8', OUK olc8a; 
13 Roman Republican Coin Hoards (London 1969) nos. 65,164,271 and 482. It is quite likely 

that the apy6pwv Klf3aTJAOV TO 'EA£vctvo8£v mentioned in the inventories of the Hecatom­
pedon from 398/7 onwards (IG IJ2 1388 B line 53 and 1393 line 33) is connected with the 
hoard of Eleusis. In this case, the private origin of the forgeries is even more evident (1) 
because by 398/7 the official bronze issues had not yet been recalled and (2) because the 
amount which was confiscated is much too small (25 dr.) to be an official issue. 

14 Robinson, op.cit. (supra n.5) 8f; Kraay, op.cit. (supra n.2) 7. 
15 Seltman, loc.cit. (supra n.2); Ehrenberg, loc.cit. (supra n.2). 
16 "The Functions of the Emergency Coinages of the Peloponnesian War," Mnemosyne 

SER. IV 19 (1966) 337-43. 



190 ATHENIAN CURRENCY 

since only Athenian citizens and residents would have been inclined 
to accept mere token coins. 

But this is, I believe, only part of the truth. When they decided to 

use bronze coins, the Athenians most likely enforced the acceptance 
of these coins exclusively and recalled the small silver coins which 
were in circulationP By doing so, they obtained a considerable 
amount of silver. Even by 406 there must have been a large quantity 
of small silver change in circulation at Athens. An estimation is of 
course impossible, but even by assuming an average of two drachmas 
per person as a minimum, for a population of ca 150,000 there must 
have been at least 50 talents of small silver coins in circulation at 
Athens. At the moment when precious metal was desperately needed, 
this was not a negligible reserve, and it would not be surprising if the 
Athenians used it to finance the war. If this interpretation is correct, 
the introduction of bronze in 406 was a kind of loan: the Athenian 
government borrowed from the population the small silver coins 
they possessed by giving them token coins in exchange. Such a 
measure would not be unique in the Greek world: we know from 
[Arist.] Oec. 2.2.16 (1348b) that in a similar situation the Clazomenians 
required their wealthy citizens to surrender their silver in exchange 
for iron coins in order to use the silver for paying the mercenaries. 
The wealthy citizens circulated these iron coins until the city was 
able to recall them and replace them again by silver coins. This was, 
as G. F. Hill and B. A. van Groningen recognized, a loan: the iron 
coins were certificates delivered to the creditors of the state and used 
by them as a currency.18 

The measure could of course be effective only provided that the 
Athenian government guaranteed to recall the tokens and exchange 
them against good silver as soon as possible. That is what actually 
happened: when the war was over, the Athenians resumed the 
production of silver and progressively recalled the token coinage by 
exchanging it against coins of silver. The statement of Aristophanes, 
Ecclesiazusae 821-22 shows that after ten years the process was com­
pleted, so that the bronze coins could be demonetized.19 

17 See as parallel the decree of Gortyn enforcing the acceptance of bronze oboloi and 
forbidding the use of oboloi of silver (lCr IV 162; J. and L. Robert, Bul/Bpig 1973,358). 

18 G. F. Hill, Ancient Greek and Roman Coins! (Chicago 1964) 72 n.2; B. A. van Groningen, 
ed. Aristote, Le second livre de I'Economique (Leyden 1933) 117. 

11 It is usually believed that the statement of Ar. Bcel. 821-22 p.~ UX~C()CU p.'18lva XaAKOVv 

'TO AO'1TOV· &.py11P4J yap xpwp.f.()a alludes to a decree reintroducing the silver currency and that 



ADALBERTO GIOVANNINI 191 

II. The Currency Law of 375/4 B.C. 

The document published by Stroud in Hesperia 43 (1974) 157-88 
shows clearly that the Athenians were reluctant to accept their own 
coinage and sometimes even refused to accept payments in Attic 
silver. The question is, how could it come to this? The Attic coinage 
of the fourth century is not inferior to the coinage of the fifth either 
in silver purity or in weight.20 Moreover, the device of the fifth 
century, which was familiar to everybody in the Greek world, was 
maintained in the fourth: there are only slight, hardly perceivable 
stylistic changes which could not affect the confidence in the Attic 
currency.21 So we would expect the Athenians normally to prefer 
their own coinage to any other. 

Stroud infers from the important role assigned by the lawgiver to 

the public tester (SoK£JLa;CT~c) that the Athenians were reluctant to 

accept their coins for fear of counterfeits (op.cit. 185). And this is 
undoubtedly the correct explanation. But how could it happen that 
counterfeits became so numerous as to create an atmosphere of 
distrust like this? Stroud attributes this phenomenon to a shortage of 
silver in these years. The law itself shows, however, that imitations 
of Attic coinage were in circulation at the time. Stroud assumes that 
the law enforced the acceptance of the imitations as well as of the 
official Attic coins and reaches the conclusion that the imitations cannot 
have been responsible for the trouble because otherwise the Athenians 
would not have tolerated their further circulation (op.cit. 186). 

therefore for about twelve years the Athenians used only bronze coins and did not strike 
silver during this time (see for instance P. Gardner, op.cit. [supra n.6] 366; R. J. Hopper, 
BSA 48 [1953] 248-49; Seltman, op.cit. [supra n.2] 177f; Robinson, op.cit. [supra n.5] 13; 
Kraay, op.cit. [supra n.2] 7). But Aristophanes says only that the bronze coins were de­
moneti{ed at this moment, not that the Athenians returned to the silver currency as late as 
that. In fact, the demonetization of the bronze emergency coins was possible only when a 
sufficient number of silver coins was already in circulation and must have been the last 
step of the substitution of the bronze by silver. Otherwise the demonetization of the token 
coins would have provoked most serious trouble among the population. It seems to me 
certain that Athens started the production of silver coins very soon after the end of the war 
and that the bronze emergency issue was progressively withdrawn from circulation by 
being exchanged against silver. The demonetization took place when the process of ex­
changing was practically realized, so that only people who had neglected to exchange their 
tokens in due time suffered a loss. This is at least the usual proceeding adopted by states 
when they want to substitute one currency for another without arousing serious trouble. 

20 See Kraay, op.cit. (supra n.2) 7f. 
21 Kraay, loc.cit. 



192 ATHENIAN CURRENCY 

This conclusion is rather puzzling and difficult to understand. 
While the Athenians had no reasons to doubt the quality of their own 
coins, they would be much more cautious and reluctant to accept 
imitations. It is true that many imitations, struck by foreign states or 
dynasts who adopted the Attic type because it was popular, were of 
good silver. But there were many kinds of imitations, and an effective 
control of their origin must have been extremely difficult and some­
times impossible. They could be the work of forgers and could be 
plated. They could be of silver but less pure than the official coins, or 
be lighter in weight. Practically, each individual imitation had to be 
examined very carefully before being accepted. The intervention of a 
dokimastes would often be necessary. All this would make shopping 
and financial transactions of every kind very complicated. We would 
therefore expect that a state wishing to keep order on its own market 
by getting rid of counterfeits would try to discourage people from 
producing imitations at all. According to the interpretation of the 
editor, the law of 375/4 would have had the opposite effect of multi­
plying the circulation of imitations of every possible origin, thus 
making the situation still more confused. 

As a matter of fact, a closer examination of the law shows that it 
did not enforce the acceptance of imitations of silver but only of the 
official issues of the Athenian mint. The relevant part of the text 
stipulates that: 
(1) the Attic silver coinage has to be accepted if it is of silver and bears 
the official device (lines 3-4); 
(2) the public tester (80KLI.taCT~C) shall test the coins according to this 
principle (lines 4-8); 
(3) if someone brings to the dokimastes an imitation of Attic coinage, 
the dokimastes shall return it to him if it is of good silver; if it is plated 
he shall cut it [to make it unusable] and confiscate it (lines 8-13); 
(4) anybody refusing to accept a coin that has been declared good by 
the dokimastes shall be punished by having his merchandise for that 
day confiscated (lines 16-18). 

It is clause (3) which led the editor to the opinion that the law 
enforced the acceptance of the imitations of good silver as well. He 
assumed that by returning the imitation to the man who brought it, 
the dokimastes declares it to be legal tender according to the law. But 
this is not what the text says. It does not stipulate that the shop­
keeper or merchant who refused to accept the coin shall now be 



ADALBERTO GIOVANNINI 193 

compelled to do so, but only that the dokimastes shall give it back, i.e. 
he shall neither confiscate nor destroy it, as he has to do in the case of 
plated coins. It neither prescribes nor forbids the acceptance of the 
coin at all. 

Therefore we must interpret literally clause (1), which gives quite 
a precise definition of the kind of coins that are to be accepted accord­
ing to the law: it states clearly that what must be accepted are the 
coins which (a) are of good silver and (b) have the official device, i.e. 
the official issues of the Athenian mint.22 Clause (2) no less clearly 
orders the dokimastes to test the coins according to this principle 
(Ka'T<X 'Taiha): he shall declare legal tender (the Greek word is 80Kt­
I.LOC 23 ) coins issued by the Athenian mint and only them. Coins that are 
of silver but do not carry the official device are not 80KtILa and therefore 
need not be accepted. Actually clause (3) constitutes only a comple­
mentary instruction to the dokimastes in that it prescribes what he is 
to do with the coins which are not official issues and therefore not 
8oKLlLa: he shall have to establish whether they are of good silver or 
plated. In the first case he shall not keep them but return them to 
their owner; if they are plated he shall confiscate and destroy them. 

This interpretation of the law does not contradict the explanation 
given by Stroud of the fact that the Athenians were reluctant to 
accept their own coinage, i.e. the fear of counterfeits. But it also pro­
vides a satisfactory answer to the question, how could the fear of 
counterfeits become so critical as to make a special law necessary? 
There can be no doubt that the number of counterfeits in circulation 
was unusually high and, above all, that it was unusually difficult for 
the normal citizen to identify them. This must be due to exceptional 
circumstances which brought an exceptional number of imitations 
and counterfeits into circulation. 

I believe that the trouble has its origin first in the decrease and then 
in the complete cessation of the production of the Athenian mint at 
the end of the Peloponnesian War. The fact is well known: in the last 
years of the war there was practically no more silver in circulation at 
Athens, a situation that induced the Athenians to mint token bronze 
coins for the first time in their history (see p.190 above). After the end 
of the war silver was certainly very scarce at Athens for a long time. 

22 'T6 6:py6ptOV 8'x!c8at 'T6 'A'T'TtIC6V oT[ 9 'T ]at 6:pyvpC;v lCa~ ~x:rIt 'T6V &r]p.6aov xa(palC'T'ijpa ••.. ] 
13 On this word see R. Bogaert, Banques et banquiers dans les cites grecques (Leyden 1968) 

316-19. 



194 ATHENIAN CURRENCY 

Although the view that silver production and the minting of silver 
coins were resumed only twelve years after the end of the war is 
surely wrong,24 there are serious reasons to assume that it took many 
years before the production of silver was again more or less normal. 25 
This implies that in the first part of the fourth century the number of 
silver coins issued by the official mint was not sufficient to cover the 
needs of the Athenian market. At the same time, the progressive 
disappearance of Attic coins from the market all over the Greek 
world26 stimulated the production of imitations of Attic coinage in 
different places.27 It is likely, as Stroud suggested, that a part of those 
imitations, which were usually of good silver, came to Athens in one 
way or another and circulated there as coinage complementary to the 
official one. The acceptance of these imitations on the Athenian 
market was probably necessitated by the scarcity of authentic Athe­
nian coins, but it was dangerous. The simultaneous circulation of 
different types of <Attic' silver would eventually create confusion and 
make the introduction of counterfeits easier than usual. And this is, I 
think, what actually happened. Encouraged by the multiplicity of 
<Attic' coins, forgers took advantage of the situation to counterfeit 
them and make the distinction between good and bad coins more and 
more difficult until the Athenians in 375/4 took energetic measures 
to reestablish order and confidence. 

It is probably not accidental that this law was enacted two years 
after the foundation of the second Athenian League, but it is no less 
certain that independently of their political ambitions the Athenians 
could not tolerate their own coinage being refused in their own mar­
ket and would have been compelled to find a remedy very soon.28 

UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA and 
THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, PRINCETON 

January, 1975 

2' See supra n.19. 
25 See Hopper, op.cit. (supra n.19) 200-54. 
26 This is shown by the evidence of the hoards: see Kraay, op.cit. (supra n.2) 8. 
27 See Robinson, op.cit. (supra n.2) 117 and op.cit. (supra n.5) 8, who stresses that the 

imitations of Attic coinage, which had been very rare in the fifth century, became more and 
more common as the production of the Athenian mint decreased in the later part of the 
Peloponnesian War. 

18 I wrote this essay during my stay at Princeton in 1974/75 as a member of the Institute 
for Advanced Study. I wish to thank Professor Martin Ostwald for helping me to improve 
my manuscript. 



ADALBERTO GIOVANNINI 195 

ADDENDUM 

Mter this essay was written Professor Stroud communicated to me his 
justified objection that I had not defined precisely enough the meaning of 
8oKLILa'EtV in clause (4). 8oKLILa'ELv means 'approve', 'declare to be good or 
~OKLILOC·. The question is, what is SOI(L/LOC? According to Stroud the dokimastes 
approves a coin through the fact that he recognizes it as KccAov and gives it 
back to its owner, i.e., 80KLILOC and I(MOC are synonymous. It follows that the 
imitations which prove to be KccAa are 8ol(tlLa. In itself this interpretation of the 
word 86KtILOC is quite plausible: Bogaert, (op.cit. [supra n.23] 316-19) under­
stands it exactly in this way and translates 8oKtILOC by 'de bon aloi'. But in the 
Athenian law the word 8oKLILa'ELV occurs already in clause (2) at line 6. This 
elause directs the dokimastes to test the coins according to the preceding 
definition (8oKtILa~'TW l(aTtX Tam-a), i.e. the definition given in clause (1), «coins 
which are of silver and bear the official device." Therefore there can be no 
doubt about the meaning of 8oKLILa'ELV in line 6: the dokimastes has to approve 
the coins issued by the Athenian mint. Should we admit that in line 16 the 
word 80I(LILa'EtV has a different meaning and applies to all silver coins whether 
official issues or imitations? It seems to me very unlikely. I believe that in 
clause (4) the word 8oKtILa~ELV is used in the same sense as in clause (2): the 
dokimastes must approve the official issues of the Athenian mint, and these 
are the coins that have to be accepted.